It’s perhaps no surprise that a healthy lifestyle lets people live longer
Q. What are “Blue Zones” and why might you be interested in knowing about them? A. They’re places in the world populated by the longest-lived people — centenarians and even some super-centenarians 110 years of age or older — with relatively few years of disability, reports the University of California, Berkeley “Wellness Letter.” The name grew out of investigators using a blue pen on a map to designate these “longevity hot spots”: the Ogliastra and Barbagia regions of Sardinia; Okinawa, Japan; the Greek island Ikaria; the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California.
In one village of about 900 inhabitants in Sardinia, for example, there have been 20 centenarians over the past 20 years, with men and women living equally long lives. And Loma Linda, California, the only Blue Zone in the U.S., has the nation’s highest concentration of Seventh Day Adventists, known for their healthy lifestyles. People there live 10 years longer than other Americans. Among the common traits of longlived people are eating plant-based diets, limiting processed foods, sugar and alcohol, being active, managing stress, and having a sense of community.
Interestingly, in the Blue Zones, rates of smoking and obesity vary widely, which suggests that nature as well as nurture are at work here. In fact, one study identified “longevity genes” common among 100+ year-olds, perhaps offering protection against a variety of chronic diseases. Q. “We park on driveways, and drive on parkways,” we say. What sense can we make of such seeming “nonsense”? A. Let history help. First coined in 1839, “driveways” were “roads that ran alongside barns, where vehicles like wagons could drive up and either offload cargo (like hay, food, or livestock) or take on cargo,” says Dan Lewis on his “Now I Know” website, drawing on “Merriam Webster.”
Fast forward to today’s automobiles, yet driveways are still “little private roads,” connecting our houses to the main road.
“Parkways” took a different route. Probably dating back to the 1870s, “parkway” is taken from the old English word “park” for “fence,” and is basically an enclosed place. With increasing automobile traffic, the need arose for car paths through the growing number of parks (hence, “parkways”), typically direct routes where “cars could travel at pretty high speeds unabated.”
So that’s the explanation and, concludes Lewis, “if you think about it, it’s still pretty weird.” Q. Milena Canning was 29 when a stroke destroyed the part of her brain housing her visual system, leaving her blind. If you hold a ball in front of her she won’t see it. Yet toss the ball to her and she will catch it. How? A. Canning is an eager participant in a study of the so-called “Riddoch phenomenon,” the ability to perceive motion while blind to other visual stimuli, reports Bahar Gholipour in “Scientific American” magazine. First described in 1917 by neurologist George Riddoch based on his experience with brain-injured World War I soldiers, the condition is very rare: Canning went from doctor to doctor until she was correctly diagnosed – and prescribed a rocking chair to help enhance her motionbased vision.
Neuroscientist Jody Culham and her colleagues have studied Canning for 10 years, trying to understand how motion perception can take “indirect routes” around the damaged region of Canning’s brain. “These side roads most likely exist in all our brains as remnants of the early visual system that evolved to detect approaching threats even without full-fledged sight.”
Says Canning, “If I can help them understand the brain more, I could understand why I’m seeing what I’m seeing.”